Sunday, April 22, 2012

Last week my friends Willy and Clemmy came over for an impromptu weeknight dinner. In deciding what to make, I established two things: one, that I hadn't cooked anything Mexican in a while, so that'd be the direction I'd take, and two, that I wanted to spend as little money as possible. A look in the fridge revealed a dire lack of produce, but in the freezer I found a stack of corn tortillas, as well as a small container of chipotles en adobo. Those items would help things along.
As I've mentioned many a time on the blog, my eating habits have changed a bit over the past few years, as I've become more interested in local, organic food: notably, I've been eating a lot less meat, and when it comes to cooking at home, I almost always prepare vegetarian dishes. When you have access to beautiful, fresh produce, it's easy to make a meal that's so flavorful that it simply doesn't need meat. Cooking almost exclusively with vegetables also keeps those grocery bills down, something that—as a perpetual unpaid intern living in New York City—is always at the forefront of my mind. So once I settled on Mexican with tortillas and chipotles, I started to think of what kind of meatless dish I could make, and that's when it came to me: chilaquiles. I hadn't eaten them in a long, long time, so they sounded good, and though they wouldn't be super quick to prepare, it would be a relatively easy process.

I'm no expert on what comprises traditional chilaquiles, but the versions I've eaten in New York tend to be made with crisp-fried corn tortillas or tortilla chips, blanketed with green or red salsa, layered with shredded meat, and finished off with a generous amount of melted cheese. Sometimes the chips remain crisp; sometimes they're soggy. I like both ways.
What I came up with was a riff on these dishes, by no means the same in preparation but pretty similar in terms of flavor. In the interest of cutting down on prep time as well as keeping the end result a lot healthier, I decided not to fry my tortillas, but rather to crisp them up in a warm oven, then crumble them into manageable pieces before layering them in a baking dish with some homemade red salsa, shredded Jack cheese, and a mix of vegetables: a sort of Mexican lasagna, if you will.

First things first: the salsa roja. I made a simple one by roasting together some tomatoes, jalapeños, and onions, then blending them up in the food processor, along with the liquid they lot off in cooking as well as some chipotles en adobo and red wine vinegar.

I settled on a combination of sweet potatoes, black beans and green onions as my filling. I roasted up the sweet potatoes in the oven as I cooked the tomato mixture; the beans were just rinsed canned beans (soaked and cooked dried beans would be even better, if you have those on hand). To build the "lasagna," I started with a layer of salsa in the bottom of a glass baking dish, then a layer of the broken-up tortillas, then a scattering of vegetables:

That got covered in some more salsa, then a generous amount of shredded cheese. Then I started over again: tortillas, salsa, veggies, and cheese, until I ran out of ingredients: I got 3 layers in there, with the top one being just tortillas and cheese. That all got baked in the oven, wrapped in a protective layer of foil, until things were nice and hot and bubbly, when I removed the foil to brown the cheese to a burnished finish:

After a brief rest to allow everything to settle, I cut that bad boy up into generous pieces. My friends and I ate them topped with sour cream, sliced avocados, chopped cilantro, and a squeeze of fresh lime:

Mexican Chilaquiles with Sweet Potatoes and Black Beans
Serves 6 - 8

2 large or 3 medium tomatoes, cut
into large pieces

1 large onion, cut into quarters

2 jalapeños, stem removed, cut in
half lengthwise

About 2 tbsp. vegetable oil, divided

Salt

Pepper

1 tbsp. chipotles en adobo (both
peppers and sauce)

1 tbsp. red wine vinegar

1 package corn tortillas

1 large or two medium sweet potatoes,
rinsed and cut into a small dice

2 15.5 oz cans black beans, rinsed
and drained

3 - 4 green onions, white and green
parts, thinly sliced

8 oz. Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
(about 2 cups)

1 avocado, pitted and sliced

1 lime, cut into wedges

Sour cream, for serving

Chopped cilantro, for serving

Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven to 400°.

2. Combine tomato, onion, and jalapeño
in a large bowl. Drizzle with 1 tbsp. vegetable oil and sprinkle with salt
and pepper. Toss to coat, then turn into an oven-safe dish. Roast for
about 30 minutes, or until tomatoes are soft and juicy and onions and
peppers begin to brown.

3. Use the same large bowl to toss the sweet potatoes with 1 tbsp. oil and salt and pepper. Turn potatoes onto a baking sheet and roast for about 20 minutes, or until soft and well-browned. Remove all vegetables from oven and lower heat to
250°.

4. In the bowl of a blender or food
processor, blend roasted vegetables and their liquid until smooth.
Add chipotle, vinegar and salt and blend again. Check for seasoning,
adding more vinegar or salt as needed. Set salsa aside.

5. Spread tortillas out in a single
layer over several large baking sheets (you'll need about 15 small
tortillas total). Bake in oven until crisp and slightly browned,
about 20 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool. Increase oven
temperature to 350°.

6. Assemble the chilaquiles: in the
bottom of a large glass lasagna pan, spread a thin layer of salsa.
Break 5 tortillas into large pieces and distribute over salsa.
Sprinkle half the sweet potatoes, half the black beans and half the
green onions over tortillas. Pour half of remaining salsa over
vegetables, then sprinkle with one third of the Jack cheese. Repeat
with 5 more tortillas, rest of vegetables, rest of salsa, and one
more third of cheese. Finish with a top layer of 5 more tortillas and
the rest of the shredded cheese.

7. Spray a large rectangular piece of
aluminum foil with nonstick cooking spread and cover baking dish
tightly. Place dish in oven and bake until chilaquiles are hot and
the cheese has melted, about 25 minutes. Remove foil and bake until
top layer of cheese is nicely browned, about 15 more minutes. Remove
from oven and let rest about 15 minutes before cutting into 6 - 8
pieces. Serve with sour cream, avocado, cilantro and lime.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Several weeks ago, my friends Willy and Jessica came over early(ish) on a Sunday morning to help me tackle a DIY project I'd been hoping to try for a while: making homemade almond milk (stay tuned for that post!). Gracious hostess that I am, I decided to feed my buddies something appropriately brunch-y as we readied ourselves to juice nuts. Now, you might notice a distinct lack of brunch recipes here on the blog, as, in general, I'm not a big fan of said meal: certainly not in restaurants, where the food tends to be overpriced and phoned in by some line cook while the chef takes the morning off, and not usually at home, either: my motor skills in the morning are up to the task of pouring a bowl of cereal or sliding some bread into the toaster oven, but nothing much more complicated than that, and especially not on a weekend morning, when I might have stayed out late the night before.

So I spent some time thinking about what people eat for brunch, and then I remembered: quiche! Now, quiche is not something I make all that often, but it's easy and tasty, so I figured it would fit the bill. Not wanting to fuss around with a crust, I decided to just do without. In this I drew some inspiration from my friend Patricia, who has lived in France for so long now that she's basically French, and therefore prepares quiche on a regular basis (not a myth—French people actually do make quiche all the time). Patricia makes delicious quiches, and they never have a crust. One thing they usually do have, though, is fish, in the form of tuna or salmon. Since I had a beautiful, wild-caught fillet of salmon in my freezer, I decided to thaw it out, poach it, and flake it into my quiche, along with some melted leeks:

To keep the filling moist and flavorful, I folded in some additional ingredients: chopped fresh dill, créme fraiche and Dijon mustard, then spread the mixture into the bottom of a greased pie plate:

Taking my cue from from France yet again, I prepared the quiche batter with a lot of dairy and not a lot of eggs. My usual instinct when making quiche would be to use many eggs, adding a bit of milk to stretch them, but I've noticed that French people always make quiche with a ton of milk, or créme fraiche, or both, and only a few eggs, and their quiches always come out phenomenally: exceptionally moist and tender, more like a custard than an omelet. And when you think about it, this approach makes sense: quiche, if not a poverty food, is certainly a classic use-up-the-leftovers dish: stick 'em in a pan, bind 'em together, and bake 'em. If the idea is to not draw too heavily upon everything else in the fridge, keeping the meal frugal and quick to prepare, then the French recipe is logical. So I did as the French do, and I have to say that although my quiche wasn't as exceptional as Patricia's (or my other French friend, Mathilde's) egg pie, it was still pretty darn good:

2. Poach the salmon: in a small saucepan, combine the salmon, some torn fresh dill, some torn dark green leek tops, a few black peppercorns, and about 1/2 tsp. salt, along with enough water to cover. Bring to a boil, then drop to a simmer. Simmer for six minutes, then turn off heat; four minutes later, remove fish and let cool. When cool, flake fish into small pieces and place in a large bowl.

3. Prepare the filling: in a large, heavy-bottomed skillet, melt butter over medium heat. Add sliced leeks and cook, stirring occasionally, until leeks are very soft and lightly browned, about 15 minutes. Add leeks to flaked salmon; add 2 tbsp. créme fraiche, the Dijon mustard and chopped dill, as well as salt and pepper to taste. Stir gently to combine, then spread evenly across the bottom a a glass pie dish, greased with spray or additional butter.

4. Prepare batter: combine eggs with remaining créme fraiche and all the milk, plus a generous amount of salt and pepper. Pour over filling and place in oven, baking quiche until it is puffed and browned on top, about 45 minutes.